Fight for $15 swells into largest protest by low-wage workers in US history

“It’s important for students to be involved because even if we aren’t working for McDonald’s or Walmart, we are still on McDonald’s or Walmart type of wages,” Robert Ascherman, a student activist from NYU, told the Guardian. According to him, some students have to choose between buying food or buying textbooks.

Among the groups joining the Fight for $15 activists was Columbia Divest for Social Justice group.

What would happen to small businesses if the minimum wage was raised to $15 an hour? The Guardian’s Ucilia Wangtried to find out:

“Labor is 30% of my overhead. A 50% increase in minimum wage would raise it to 45%. It’s already tough to offer a business to the community and keep my head above water. Honestly I’d go under with that kind of increase,” a coffeeshop owner who asked to remain anonymous said.

Some low-wage workers are aware of the danger that a higher minimum wage could pose to their jobs.

“I don’t think I’d like to see minimum wage increase that much because labor cost is such a high expense for so many coffeeshops and restaurants that I think the long-term effect will be more detrimental,” Becka Hare, a barista at Love coffee shop in Santa Monica, California, told Wang.

What a $15 minimum wage means for US small businesses

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When we spoke with her earlier today, SEIU international president Mary Kay Henry said that she was going to be at the University of California campus in Berkeley later this afternoon.

“It’s - for me – the representation of how the student movement is infusing this economic movement,” she said, pointing out that students from about 170 US campuses were expected to participate. “That’s a new dimension to the Fight for $15 and the union that we haven’t seen before.”

Henry has just completed a tour of six colleges, which took her through St Louis, Boston, Los Angeles and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

“I saw students everywhere on fire to fight for their future and link arms with these workers who were being underpaid to change this low-wage economy,” she said.

Among the first-time protesters out on the streets today was Tashayla Harper, 19, who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and works for McDonald’s.

Harper earns $7.25 an hour. Since she works for a corporate store, she is eligible for the $1 raise that McDonald’s announced two weeks ago. Despite her eligibility, Harper and her family joined today’s Fight for $15 protest: “We went to a Mayfair Road McDonald’s to strike in front of their store and let them know that we are not going to stop until we get $15,” she said.

Harper said her one-year old daughter Ky’lah, who came along, inspired her to join the campaign.

“I work and I only make $7.25 and that little money goes on my daughter, I never have enough for myself. My daughter inspired me to join the movement,” said Harper, who relies on food stamps to supplement her income.

“It’s at the point where I can’t even afford my own house, because I don’t make enough. I rely on those food stamps every month.”

Right now, Harper, her daughter and her boyfriend live with her boyfriend’s grandparents.

Tashayla Harper and her family joined the Fight for $15 protest for the first time. Photograph: Courtesy of Wisconsin Jobs Now

“I felt like it was unfair – I didn’t understand why we weren’t treated the same. At every McDonald’s, workers do the same work and wear the same uniform. So I didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting a raise like everybody else,” said Brandy Lucas, a $7.30-an-hour worker at a franchisee-run McDonald’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, who was planning to strike for the first time.

“There is clearly no widespread, organic evidence that employees of any fast food franchises are walking out of their jobs on their own volition and these planned protests are the last thing business owners and the US economy need during this still fragile, uneven economic recovery,” Steve Caldeira, president and CEO of the International Franchise Association, said in a statement.

There are about 12,500 franchisee-operated McDonald’s restaurants in the US, accounting for about 90% of total stores. McDonald’s has said that it does not determine wages set by its more than 3,000 US franchisees.

Kathryn Slater-Carter, who previously owned a McDonald’s franchise store, told the Guardian that even if franchisees wanted to raise their employees wages, many of them can’t afford to. Why? Because of the high costs of running a business. In addition to the regular overhead costs, franchisees pay a 3-5% royalty fee to McDonald’s, another 5% for advertising, and some also pay rent to McDonald’s. For Slater-Cater, that rent was about 12.5%.

“We tried to move [our employees] along wage-wise as well as we could,” said Slater-Carter. “Obviously when McDonald’s controls most of your pricing, we were left with less than 20 items on our menu – out of 100 – that we were able to set prices on. Everything else was mandated either through nationwide dollar menu or through local advertising co-op mandates. Your hands are pretty well tied.”

A recent poll of McDonald’s franchisees conducted by Janney Capital Markets revealed that the franchisees’ six-month outlook for McDonald’s US business was more negative than at any time in Janney’s 11-year survey history.

“McDonald’s system is broken,” one franchisee wrote, according to CNBC. “They talk menu reduction to help our people, simplify our menu for customers – but add products to help sales and it does not work. We will continue to fall and fail.”

Their tweets come day after New York City comptroller Scott Stringer released a report, which found that increasing New York minimum wage to $15 an hour would put “$10bn into the pockets of nearly 1.5 million workers,” and would “boost consumer spending, lessen the burden on social assistance programs, and benefit students.”

The SEIU union’s efforts to unionize low-wage workers have not been well-received by trade organizations such as the International Franchise Association. Steve Caldeira, the IFA’s president and CEO, issued a statement earlier today calling the Fight for $15 protests a union-funded public relations stunt.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently held a hearing looking into whether McDonald’s should be named as a joint employer with its franchisees.

“If McDonald’s is found to be a joint employer, that could make it jointly liable if franchisees illegally fire workers for backing a union, violate safety laws or cheat workers out of overtime. McDonald’s says its franchisees are independent business operators who face minimal interference from the parent company,” reports Steven Greenhouse for the Guardian.

According to Caldeira, SEIU efforts to unionize fast-food workers and the NLBR hearing are intertwined.

“The SEIU can claim that the goal of these protests is to increase wages for workers,” he said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the victims of the NLRB’s overreach will be the workers, which these paid protests are supposedly designed to help, and the elimination of opportunities for aspiring employees and entrepreneurs to own franchise businesses. By terminating local control of franchise businesses through an expanded joint employer standard promulgated by a pro-union government agency, the only winners are union leaders and the policymakers beholden to them.”

The press release issued by the IFA went on to state that SEIU has spent $18.5m in 2014 on its Fight for $15 campaign, “an increase of nearly 56.4% or close to $6,696,000 from 2013”. A recent analysis by the anti-union non-profit group the Center for Union Facts found that SEIU had paid $1.3m to Berlin Rosen, a public relations consultants firm that has been handling press for the Fight for $15 protests.

BerlinRosen, which has played a key role in media operations tied to Fight for $15 — and which McDonald’s intends to subpoena in connection with the NLRB joint-employer hearings — received $1.3 million from SEIU. (For those keeping score, SEIU paid BerlinRosen $848,000 in 2013 and $393,000 in 2012.) The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, collected $150,000 from the SEIU in 2014, and the National Employment Law Project, a labor law nonprofit, received $135,000. Morning Shift checked all the Center’s calculations, and they’re correct.

The Guardian spoke with Mary Kay Henry, international president of the SEIU, earlier today after she left a Fight for $15 protest in San Francisco.

When asked if the Fight for $15 campaign was worth the funds, she said: “Oh yeah.”

There is not a price tag you can put on how this movement has changed the conversation in this country. It is raising wages at the bargaining table. It’s raised wages for eight million workers. I believe we are forcing a real conversation about how to solve the grossest inequality in our generation. People are sick of wealth at the top and no accountability for corporations.

She said that today’s actions by workers show that Americans are ready to hold government and the corporations accountable “to make sure that when you work hard, that you can feed your family and lead a decent life”.

“That’s really, really important fight and we intend to win it,” she said.

The Guardian’s Amanda Holpuch has caught up with another group of workers in New York City.

A small delegation of airport workers affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)’s 32BJ branch is waiting in the lobby of British Airways’ office to speak with a company representative in the hope that the corporation will push the businesses it contracts with to increase wages and give workers benefits.

LaGuardia airport security guard Juan Chapman is one of the organizers for airport workers in the Fight for $15 campaign. He works for a company called Aviation Safeguards, which pays him $10.10 per hour.

Chapman has been supporting his wife and daughter on this wage for two years. His top concern is getting benefits.

“It’s really hard,” said Chapman. “I’m tired of going into a store and asking: ‘What do you have on sale and what do you have on clearance?’”

Santiago Walbert is a baggage lead for Prime Flight at LaGuardia Airport and is also an organizer for airport workers. He also works as a security guard, but that combined with the $10.10 per hour he makes at the airport is not enough to support his wife and six kids. He also helps support his mother and sister, who do not have jobs.

“$10.10 is not going to take care of that,” Walbert said.

He claimed that employees who are trying to unionize and fight for higher wages are being harassed by Prime Flight management.

Before the group entered the office building, about 50 airport workers and 32BJ staffers carried large purple balloons through the windy streets of midtown Manhattan before gathering across the street from the headquarters of One World Alliance, the coalition of airline companies that contracts the businesses that employ the demonstrators. They remained outside while the delegation waited in the lobby of the building, whose security guards are also part of 32BJ.

Organizers have been told that all British Airways executives are “out to lunch”.

A small delegation of airport workers gather outside British Airways’ office in New York. Photograph: Amanda Holpuch for the Guardian

The workers were holding balloons and wearing shirts that read ‘Poverty wages don’t fly!’ Photograph: Amanda Holpuch for the Guardian

Members of the 32BJ union carry large purple balloons through the windy streets of midtown Manhattan.

The Guardian’s Ucilia Wang has left San Francisco for Oakland, where she says the protest is “much larger and rowdier”. The demonstration there began with a march to a McDonald’s in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland. The protestors chanted “Oakland is a union town” while they marched.

Inside the McDonald’s, they chanted “Come on out! We’ve got your back!” A few McDonald’s workers then stepped out from behind the counter/kitchen.

Robert Reich, former labor secretary under Bill Clinton, showed up to speak at the rally. Inside the McDonald’s, he said, “The fight for $15 minimum wage is a fight about dignity. It’s a fight that all of us have a deep stake in. It’s a movement for civil rights. The movement for the $15 minimum wage is a fight for the soul of America.”

Then a McDonald’s worker who walked off her job began to speak - Sandra Roman, 34, a mother of four. She spoke in Spanish and a woman next to her translated her words to English:

“I’m joining the fight for $15 and a union. I want everyone to know that when the minimum wage went up [in Oakland, it went up to $12.25 from $9 in March of this year], they took away many of my co-workers’ hours. If I get sick and call in, I get suspended. That’s why I want to join the union. I want to be protected.”

Three McDonald’s workers from this shop walked out of their job mid-shift.

After an hour inside the store, the protestors left, chanting, “I believe that we will win!”

Outside, a worker from another McDonald’s in Oakland - Guadalupe, 39, who did not want her last name used - said that she used to be able to work 40 hours a week. Now it was unpredictable, though she could still work over 30 hours, she said. She makes $12.25 now, the minimum wage that went into effect in Oakland last month.

“We deserve a livable wage. It’s not just about fast food workers but also home health workers and teachers. Raising the minimum wage to $15 will help a lot,” she said.

Fight for $15 protestors march through Oakland, California. Photograph: Ucilia Wang for The Guardian.

In March, Sabaah Jordan, an organizer with Black Lives Matter in New York, explained why the campaign against police killings of African-Americans was intertwined with the Fight for $15:

Black Lives Matter must stand in solidarity with the Fight for $15 because the same fast-food workers, the Walmart workers, the airport workers, the home health aides and the child care workers who are fighting for $15 are the same black and brown people who are vulnerable to unchecked violence in the hands of the police.

These issues are completely connected. It is a part of the systematic exploitation of black and brown people in this country and it’s gone on for too long. If these corporations want to show that black lives truly do matter, they must grant workers $15 - a livable wage - and the right to a union.

Robert Ascherman, a student organizer at NYU, was at the Upper West Side McDonald’s during the die-in.

“Shouts of ‘We can’t breathe on $7.25’ from the Black Lives Matter movement were heard,” he told the Guardian. According to him, the demonstration spanned a number of blocks, and was “quite jubilant” as protesters chanted: “If we don’t get it, shut it down.”

The protesters were joined by members of the Retail Action Project, who stopped to protest at a nearby Zara store before making their way to the McDonald’s.

As we mentioned before, Black Lives Matter activists are joining low-wage workers in today’s protests. A group of them have just staged a die-in in front of McDonald’s on Upper West Side in New York. (h/t Kayla Epstein)

The Center for Story-based Strategy, a consulting organization that trains activists, has released a short video in support of Fight for $15 campaign.

This Wednesday, 15 April tens-of-thousands of people are joining the #FightFor15. This inspiring organizing for $15 an hour wage and the right to form a union without retaliation got us thinking: What is the story McDonald’s is telling us? What is the story that works for workers?